Wagner apparently let a Japanese photographer take a photo of him unmasked when he was there in May, so this was no last minute call and probably the plan from last year. Maybe before last year, because AAA did start down the Wagner/Psycho and Pagano/Pentagon paths for TripleMania 24 before switching those around, perhaps thinking they needed one more year to set it up.

I don’t know what the deal was with Meisas’ injury. The finish of the match was really flat, as if it really had been cut short by an injury and Mesias was supposed to win and they had no idea what to do. Still, the match and the show had been so long at that point, it seems crazy to think they were going a lot longer and Mesias ended up walking with help to the back. Rey Escorpion’s run-in was totally downplayed by everyone in the ring, to the point where he went over the top even for the usual lucha bit of attacking in injured guy, as if he knew this sucked but had to get himself over.

Jeff Jarrett looked like he had no business being in a ring, but he was treated like a huge deal to set up Parka beating him – and then they played the music because whoever was running it knew Parka was winning and figured beating Jarrett must’ve been it. The match went on for a few more minutes.

Maybe Marty is allied with the Clowns going forward, but it also felt like they were just checking off appearances for regulars with all the people running in. Ricky Marvin got Intocable’s spot in the Torneo TripleMania. Elegido appeared before the show for a giveaway. I think that leaves Gronda and the lesser minis.

I haven’t watched any of the matches again complete – this is time 3 of 5 I’ll be writing about this show, so I’ll be doing it eventually – but it’s so obvious something happened with Lady Shani and Sexy Star that I should’ve picked up the first time; the Mexican announcers seemed to. Lady Shani lands a sliding kick to Sexy Star’s head about 2:30 in, Sexy takes a moment to recover, then stops selling all of Shani’s offense, and Shani starts swinging and Sexy goes for her hair. Piero tried to pull them apart and still needed Ayako’s help to do it. It might have started before that, and Sexy was weird all match leading to her pulling Rosemary’s arm out. I’ve not been on Twitter today, but Rosemary apparently praised Shani, Ayako and Vampiro for calming down the situation while ripping Sexy Star for her actions. Rosemary says Sexy Star didn’t apologize and is trying to tell people it was an angle.

Any other promotion in the world would fire Sexy Star after this – but recall, AAA never has fired Sexy Star. They didn’t last time either, she just told them she was retiring and they thought that was good enough. And even if they did fire her, this is on AAA for enabling Sexy Star all this time. You could see something like this coming after Sexy Star ripped the other AAA women and Lady Shani ripped her back on +Lucha’s podcast, except apparently AAA didn’t see enough to put a stop to it. Really, you could see this coming from the moment they rehired Sexy Star and gave her the title the first night back – that was inviting an ego driven disaster and it took two matches to get one. Dorian & Marisela made that call, not Vamp, and that’s the strongest reason nothing will get done – getting rid of Sexy Star would be admission they screwed up, and they’re not going to take that L. They’re not even going to take a smaller L – it sticks out that Rosemary mentions an apology from Vamp but did not mention the owners of AAA offering the same.

(Sometimes I think Vampiro’s given so much freedom to do whatever he wants – like chokeslam the heavyweight champion as the semimain underneath their biggest title match of the year to set up no match – because the Roldan’s know how many messes he has to clean up and they figure letting Vamp putting himself over will keep him happy, or at least keep him going. It hurts the onscreen product for the fans, but the fans aren’t the priority.)

I have no proof, no one’s told me anything, but if I got to put money on it, I would bet that Hijo del Vikingo was planned to win the La Llave a la Gloria competition from day 1. He’s the only one of the three winners who didn’t even go thru a tryout, and with them instead putting him on TV right away (like how Daga was put on TV before he actually won that competition.) I think AAA was happy to find Angelikal, and maybe have discovered Ashley thru these tryouts, but I believe this was a bit of a storyline. Which is fine, if you want to tell a story about a guy winning it, fixing it so a guy the caliber Hijo del Vikingo wins is good and it still gave other people a chance they wouldn’t have gotten.

It’s too bad that second Llave match happened with about 15% of the crowd in the building. It would a much better experience for everyone if AAA took a page from WWE and NJPW, had a fan fest the day before the show some place, and ran minor matches the level of the La Llave a La Gloria ones so these shows wouldn’t be five hours long. They could even run last minute angles there or interviews. But, the only thing AAA takes from NJPW & WWE is storyline ideas without understanding them, so understanding a fan fest or pacing is unlikely.

The booking of this feud has become very obvious: I think you can figure out the outcome of every match until 09/01, and then the outcome in the Gran Prix. Still, it’ll probably be a fun time. I just hope Taven puts in a good word for Euforia.

Kenny King joins Kojima as at least hanging around for the weekend. I’d assume this lineup means all the other foreigners are finishing up on 09/01.

I don’t have a painless way to search for singles matches that are opener, so I don’t know if that hasn’t happened in a long time or just plain hasn’t happened ever. It’s exceedingly strange; it’s obviously a tryout match and almost a dark match, but it’s strange they didn’t bump two of the guys from the “segunda” to give them their spot. That 1v1 combination doesn’t seem to make any sense: the only Kairos I know is a guy working indie shows in Puebla who’s never faced Demasiado and never wrestled in Arena Puebla. I guess he must be in CMLL’s school somewhere.

Legends Inmortales continues to drift away from “Legends” with the names involved, but it was always just an excuse to book Canek and, for Guadalajara, any Rayos or Dinamitas who wanted to be involved. The poster makes it seem like Rayo’s facing both Canek & Cien Caras.

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5 thoughts to “TripleMania XXV, CMLL weekend results”

I’m not don’t know much about apuesta rules, but can a masked wrestler like Euphoria or Dragon Rojo lose their hair before losing their mas,k or must you lose the mask first? I ask because you wrote “Mascara 2000 Jr. wants a hair vs hair match with Dr. Wagner now that they’re both unmasked. Or he just wants an easy payday.”

I dig Wagner ‘ s bearded look, but it should have came later. Maybe a few months later, to establish a new look. He definitely has a much different look than any other veteran wrestler out there, and maybe that could help. But that’s if he continues with his career. I have a feeling he’ll change his look soon to a cleaner style, though.